Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday November 20, 2008 @10:10AM
from the you-can't-make-this-up dept.

Da Massive writes "Leading Hollywood film studios Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Disney Enterprises are suing Australia's second largest ISP, iiNet, saying it's complicit in the infringement of their copyrighted material. According to a statement of claim, 'the ISP knows that there are a large number of customers who are engaging in continuing infringements of copyright by using BitTorrent file sharing technology.'"

This is the age old debate where possession of a tool is equalled to necessarily having the criminal intent to use it to commit acts you know are ilegal. Next up - watch hardware stores get sued for selling hammers that can be used by thugs and crooks to mug people by hitting them over the head. When will shoe stores get sued for selling boots and shoes that are painful to the person receiving kicks in the ass?

When will shoe stores get sued for selling boots and shoes that are painful to the person receiving kicks in the ass?

Gotta remember though, they're starting in Australia, which is a good idea considering their government's attitude on the internet and the freedoms provided therein. Interesting to me that they've started there. If it works there and the government buys into it, then look for it to spread to the other overly conservative nations. (I'm looking at you Russia)

wait, iiNet wasn't the one actually experimenting the new Australian filtering technology? This lawsuit is a HUGE win against such filtering protection... or not? Am I missing something?

Yes, it is an indicator that iiNet is opposed to internet content filtering [pcauthority.com.au]. However, it's also an indicator to all ISP's around the world that if they do not employ filtering they risk an extremely expensive legal battle with the seven top film studios, each of which probably has more assets and prior experience in court than the ISP's.

What's strange and rather scary about this situation is that "iiNet will be participating in the trials, mostly to prove that the filters are impractical, unworkable and unwanted." [see link above] The studios are suing them not for refusing to cooperate, but for cooperating reluctantly. That's all it takes for the MAFIAA to pull the trigger it seems.

iiNet are being sued because they didn't do anything when the film companies sent them notices that some of their customers were pirating their media. They apparently sent 18 notices [smh.com.au] and iiNet refused to do anything because they were allegations rather than court ordered actions.

To be honest, this seems quite reasonable to me, iiNet should not have to cut people off just because someone says: That guy was pirating my stuff, here is an IP and a time. The companies should go after the individual, not the ISP.

Ultimately we will see what the federal courts decide. The media companies in question have stated that if this goes well, they will continue onto other Australian ISPs.

iiNet are being sued because they didn't do anything when the film companies sent them notices that some of their customers were pirating their media. They apparently sent 18 notices and iiNet refused to do anything because they were allegations rather than court ordered actions.

But they did do something about it. They passed the allegations on to the police. That is what anyone should do. It's the police's job to investigate allegations.

That is beyond what they should do. The MPAA should have made their complaint to the police in the first place, and if the police decide to use their limited resources to follow it up, then and only then should iiNet get involved. Alternatively, if the MPAA starts a civil case and obtains a court order to get information out of iiNet.

That didn't stop them. Even though they lost the Betamax case circa 1980, they still sued Digital Audio Tape (DAT) and kept it out of America. Then they tried to sue Digital Compact Cassette and Minidisc, which led to inbuilt copy protection of these devices.

They will never stop. They fear losing their jobs and that's one powerful motive.

Remember that SONY (grrrr) produces lots of Films./Music through its plethora of subsidiaries but also makes CD & DVD writers.Now that I come to think of it, don't they also sell a BluRay drive capable of writing content?

They (the RIAA/MPAA/etc) lawyers are being very careful but sooner or later they are going to come a cropper. It looks like they are targetting the carriers outside of the USA who don't have 'common carrier' immunity. All they are going to do is make more and more people pissed off at e

Actually they do have common carrier protections. One of the upsides of the fact that the US has ridden roughshod all over the world and forced everyone to match their copyright laws is that safe harbour applies as well.

The argument is that safe harbour doesn't apply anymore because filtering is possible(a couple of schmucks from both sides of kazaa are selling a hash based filtering system and the government is buying it or at least pretending to). This is the general gist of the lawsuit, the guys from t

Until the Hollywood studios are ready, willing, and able to deliver their newest products, very inexpensively, to people living in tiny towns 700 miles northwest of Perth, they should stop hassling the people who are actually presently doing this.

While I agree with your sentiments, the analogy doesn't really hold up.

The hammer shop has no way of knowing what the hammer is used for, after it leaves the shop.The ISP on the otherhand, does have the ability to know what an account is being used for, or what type of data is being sent.

A better analogy would be an airline being held responsible for the cocaine that a passenger is carrying, or a tollway operator being charged because a car on its road network is carrying illegal firearms - in effect, you'r

I have 4 different games I have to patch for my nephews,all the patches come from BT. All of the copies of OO.o I have downloaded in the last 3 years or so has come BT. All of my FOSS comes by BT. So the "magic pirate tool" argument really doesn't hold. Besides,isn't Oz the place where they have some of the shittiest caps on the planet? Are you telling me that with those itty bitty caps the *.A.As are STILL going to bitch? Give me a freaking break!

Truth doesn't matter in a court of law. Only what you can convince the judge and jury is truth is what matters, whether your "truths" are actually true or not.

IAAL, and I call BS. Truth matters plenty in court. What also matters is how skilfully you are able to demonstrate the truth to a court, and (probably most importantly) how well you are able to argue for your preferred application of the law to the 'truth' (i.e. facts).

I worked for a judge here in Australia for a year, and I do not believe he ever accepted a piece of evidence that was untrue. On the whole, I'd say we usually had a very strong understanding of the actual facts in each trial by the end of the evidence.

Incidentally, this will be a civil claim in Australia and will be heard by a judge, not a jury.

Riiiiight, because my client who uses Amazon S3 to originate huge software packages that are distributed over Bittorrent (a feature built into S3) is obviously committing some sort of criminal act by using the Bittorrent protocol.

Get over yourself. Next you'll outlaw fire extinguishers because I can beat someone over the head with them. Go after the crime not the tool.

Disclaimer: Personally, I think media companies have perpetrated a copyright land grab long enough. Fuck 'em.

Even though guns are used for killing 90% of the time, that doesn't change the fact they are still useful. Like when I deterred a thief from stealing my car (last week) or when I rescued my girlfriend from a Philadelphia mugger (about ten years ago). Guns can save lives as well.

Same logic applies to bittorrent. Or blank tapes. Or blank CDs. Yes they are mostly used for piracy, but they also have useful purposes as well, and that's why they remain legal.

I don't know about american law, but atleast in Swedish law the right to Self-Defense does not extend to the right to kill. You're only allowed to use the force necessary to keep yourself safe and it's really hard to argue that killing or maiming is necessary.

The best defense is a good offense?

Kidding aside, in a fight where you need to keep yourself safe, typically the only recourse IS to kill or maim. People are animals, and if it comes down to your safety if you are in a fair fight then you are doing something wrong.

It depends. If you kill the murderer or thief who is engaged in the act of attacking you or endangering your safety, so be it.

But if you hold him at gunpoint, put him on his knees, and then shoot him afterward, then you, my friend, are a murderer.

"LAREDO, Texas (AP) â" A Texas jury acquitted a man accused of killing a boy who broke into his home looking for a snack â" a case that sparked outrage in this border city, where many thought the man should not have even been charged.

It took the jury of eight men and four women three hours Friday to find Jose Luis Gonzalez, 63, not guilty of murdering Francisco Anguiano, who was 13 when he and three friends broke into Gonzalez's trailer to rummage for snacks and soda one night in July 2007.

"I thank God and my attorney, the jury and the judge," Gonzalez said in Spanish after the verdict. "It was a case where it was my life or theirs, and it's a very good thing that they (the jurors) decided in my favor."

Gonzalez said he was sorry for Anguiano's death, but "it was a situation in which I feared for my life."

Texas law allows homeowners to use deadly force to protect themselves and their property. In June, a grand jury in Houston cleared a homeowner who shot and killed two burglars outside his neighbor's house despite the dispatcher's repeated request that he stay inside his own home.

"I feel vindicated for Mr. Gonzalez and his family and for all of the homeowners and all of the seniors in Laredo," said Isidro "Chilo" Alaniz, Gonzalez's attorney. "This case has huge implications across the board. We always, always believed in Mr. Gonzalez's right to defend his life and his property."

Alaniz is running uncontested for Webb County district attorney in November.

However, Assistant District Attorney Uriel Druker maintained during his closing arguments that the case was not about homeowners' right to protect their property, but about when a person is justified in using deadly force to do so.

"What really took place here was a case of vigilantism," he said after the verdict. "A 13-year-old boy was killed because a man was enraged."

Anguiano's aunt, who asked not to be named, said in Saturday's editions of the Laredo Morning Times that she was disappointed with the verdict.

"The state fought the case the way it should have," she said. "There was a sufficient amount of evidence, and I thought that some of the jurors would be a father or a mother, and perhaps they would think about this happening to them."

Gonzalez had endured several break-ins at his trailer when the four boys, ranging in age from 11 to 15, broke in. Gonzalez, who was in a nearby building at the time, went into the trailer and confronted the boys with a 16-gauge shotgun. Then he forced the boys, who were unarmed, to their knees, attorneys on both sides say.

The boys say they were begging for forgiveness when Gonzalez hit them with the barrel of the shotgun and kicked them repeatedly. Then, the medical examiner testified, Anguiano was shot in the back at close range. Two mashed Twinkies and some cookies were stuffed in the pockets of his shorts.

Another boy, Jesus Soto Jr., now 16, testified that Gonzalez ordered them at gunpoint to take Anguiano's body outside.

Gonzalez said he thought Anguiano was lunging at him when he fired the shotgun.

Many people in Laredo â" a town just across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where drug violence runs rampant â" defended Gonzalez's actions. In online responses to articles published by the Morning Times, comments included statements such as "The kid got what he deserved" and calls to "stop the unfair prosecution.""

This, to me, is not self defense. Self defense is you being inside your home, with a robber breaking in and trying to break down a door to get at you and your family. In which case, let him have it with both barrels, as they say.

Excuse my Godwin, but wanting to kill the "stupid" was one of the things Hitler wanted to do....

I agree that the current "less then lethal" weapons are not terribly good at anything, they're both lethal and hard to use properly.

I'm not going to excuse that Godwin. Don't be absurd. He in no way advocated killing the stupid because they were stupid.

He said someone making the decision to steal and murder was stupid based on that decision, and the condition of being stupid wasn't why he was advocating defending himself with the most appropriate tool.

This same tired argument gets dragged out every time this comes up. There are A LOT of WoW users and WoW's not even the only app to use BitTorrent type tech. Steam [play.tm] does as well. (yes, 4 year old link. I spent 5 seconds googling, do your own research.)

It hasn't even been proven that all of the music / programs / movies getting downloaded are truly being pirated. Tons of people bought Spore and then downloaded cracked versions to avoid activation issues. When I used file sharing apps to get music I already owned about 90% of the stuff I was downloading. I was just too lazy to bring my CDs to work to rip them. It was easier to just DL it. Same with movies. How many people have DVD ripping software compared to how many people have bittorrent?

The media-entertainment sellers have made the same argument against just about every recordable media format invented. The old cassette tape almost never made it to market and several formats of digital tape never made or were relegated to professional use only applications.

For most people, the rule is that they fear what they don't understand... in media-entertainment, they fear what they can't control and that [especially] includes the consumer.

The media industry has not only been crossing the line, but they stepped over, built their homes and are living comfortably over the line. They need to be put back into their places starting with extreme copyright reform restoring the duration of copyright to something reasonable and re-establishing fair use.

Could you imagine how much more motivated the software, music and video industries would be to create better and more varied content when their old cash cows are killed off? Just the range of old software that would become public domain by itself would reveal some very useful things that could then be modified for imbedded and other uses... other uses that could also include providing access to ancient data formats that public data has been encoded in for example.

And what would prevent people from wanting to use the old stuff? Simple! Make newer and better stuff! Forget small incremental changes, not fixing ALL the bugs and all that stuff... marketing broken software as a business model [I am looking at you Microsoft] will then be defeated...or at least deterred a bit.

If someone today said that they could find a way of making money by giving away something broadcasting it across the planet on TV and on the net and still make people pay for it they would laughed at but this is exactly what the media companies do...

I can pay to watch a movie, buy it on DVD, watch it on free to view TV, and it is still illegal for me to download it and watch that? I've paid twice to watch it and a company has paid you to broadcast it... why do you still want money for it...?

Copyright is being used as a licence to print money forever by these companies...

I think what the poster parent was trying to say (perhaps unclearly) was that the fact that Australia is a democratic republic has nothing to do with a court case. Perhaps what was meant was "thank heavens Australia is a country of laws where cases are based on law and not some autocratic ruler's opinion".

Ah, this explains how when I woke up this morning all countries had the death penalty, this afternoon there were no speed limits, and tomorrow I'm due to sacrifice my firstborn child after an edict from some leader of a tribe in south America. This automatic copying of laws from other countries is making life rather awkward.

We're not talking about copying laws, we're talking about filing lawsuits, do try to pay attention. Obviously it makes sense for the studios to file such suits in the countries where they are most likely to succeed first, before filing in other countries.

Correct. Once they have precedent they can stand before an U.S. or EU judge and say, "We won in Australia. You should follow their decision and comply with international law," or something similar.

(Of course I've never understood why foreign law should have any influence on U.S. law - the People's Constitution is the only supreme law that should matter here. What happens elsewhere should be irrelevant.)

the ISP knows that there are a large number of customers who are engaging in continuing infringements of copyright by using BitTorrent file sharing technology.

So what? McDonalds also knows that there are a large number of customers who are engaging in continuing infringements of copyright by using BitTorrent file sharing technology. So does Ford. Smith and Wesson know that they have customers who engage in murder and robbery. The phone company knowingly sells phone lines and number lists to telemarke

As soon as the ISP's started filtering traffic they didn't like and affecting what data is on their network, they became content providers and could not ask for immunity. If they were to stop filtering/blocking/etc what goes over their tubes, they could probably ask to not be considered a content provider and then what happens on their tubes is not their fault; they would be just offering a service.

At least they're not suing a 17 year old with a broadband connection for a change. Maybe the ISP will have enough money that they can actually make a proper fight of this. That might mean we can finally have the argument aired carefully enough the general public can hear both sides.

I agree with what somebody else said about hammers, but I don't think most people yet understand that argument. It will be great for the debate when more people do.

The reason they're not suing the 17 year old, is because iiNet has refused to pass on the infrindgement notices.

Its a civil law matter in australia, Its not up to AFAICT(our version of the MPAA/RIAA) or the ISP to determine that someone is downloading copyrighted material, The studio's need to goto the police, File a court case against the individual, Only once they're actually considered to be doing something illegal by the court can the ISP hand over personal details about the individual.

.. when I asked them how I could make back-ups of my games so I don't have to cause damage to the originals to install them ( some 20 odd CDs for 'The Sims 2' ). They told me I couldn't because, and I quote:

"You cannot create backup copies of the discs because this would allow a person to freely distribute copies of the game, which is something EA does not allow."

My reply was similar to some other posts here:

"I have no intention in distributing the copies, I merely wish to protect my investment by not using the original discs and therefore reduce the chance of damage to them. Denying me the ability to do that based on the _possibility_ that it can be used illegally is unfair and unjust.By the reasoning you have displayed, knives are not permitted to be sold as they can be used to injure or kill someone ( which the law does not allow ), along with plastic bags, rope, water, scissors and plenty of other items you can find in any house. However, this is not the case."

In this case, it is "You are providing a service which allows people to do naughty things amongst other, legitimate activities. We are going to sue you."

No, you don't know that they're protected when you buy them. It's a reasonable assumption nowadays, unfortunately, but the only people I've seen putting any indication of their restrictions on the box are products using Steam.

How exactly do you plan to make backups of the discs without 'using' them? If you only need to have the discs in the drive to install the game and not to play it, then what difference is there? A better backup solution would be to back up the game folder after it's installed anyway, then you won't have to go through tho whole 20 disc reinstallation. You could presumably just install the base game for the appropriate registry settings (if it even needs them), and then copy back the backed up directory to get

It would be in the ISP's best interests to stick to layer 3, forwarding IP packets. As soon as you start analysing and filtering them, you're doing a lot more than just being a service provider. The latest trends of demanding packet inspection and performing traffic-based throttling are really destroying the classic model of networking that the internet is based on. It's got to stop, or we'll have something that just isn't recognizable as "the internet" any longer.

If they're smart, they'll just say that inspecting traffic and disallowing certain types of packets is not in their business plan, and they don't have the capability or reason to do it. Otherwise they'll open themselves up to a lot more lawsuits down the road, from both sides of the fence. They'll find themselves having to bend over again and again for anyone asking them for pretty much anything. Instead, the right answer is, "we just forward IP packets, we don't piece them together or look at what they contain."

But if they don't look at what they're carrying, how will they know if and when child porn and copyrighted songs are being trafficked across their tubes? Won't somebody please think of the children and the megacorporations!

I hope the day never arrives I have to find a "naked" internet provider (get it? like a naked DSL line?) who I have to VPN to in order to get raw internet, because ATComcasTimeWarner deep inspects and modifies my packets.

It would be in the ISP's best interests to stick to layer 3, forwarding IP packets. As soon as you start analysing and filtering them, you're doing a lot more than just being a service provider. The latest trends of demanding packet inspection and performing traffic-based throttling are really destroying the classic model of networking that the internet is based on. It's got to stop, or we'll have something that just isn't recognizable as "the internet" any longer.

"They send us a list of IP addresses and say `this IP address was involved in a breach on this date'. We look at that say `well what do you want us to do with this? We can't release the person's details to you on the basis of an allegation and we can't go and kick the customer off on the basis of an allegation from someone else'. So we say `you are alleging the person has broken the law; we're passing it to the police. Let them deal with it'."

Excellent synopsis and way to deal with allegations, as we've all heard exactly how often they get these things wrong. If there is an allegation of a crime it's up to the police to properly collect evidence and give it to the prosecutor's office, or the equivalent thereof in local terms.

He said another problem with this traffic is that is not on its network. "It is transiting our network along with the billions of other things passing across the network which are perfectly legal. We are not traffic cops. We can't stand in the middle of it and stop the individual items that might be against the law. These guys are asking us to be judge, jury and executioner," Malone said.

And just like the Pr0n filters the government seems to be forcing on the public over in that section of the globe, it is completely unfeasible for a common carrier to even attempt this sort of thing. I would be completely pissed if I was blocked from accessing anything on the net. If a site is illegal then take it down, but don't try and filter what comes through my pipeline.

"I think they genuinely believe that ISPs have a secret magic wand that we are hiding and if we bring it out we can make piracy disappear just by waving it. And it doesn't exist."

An attitude all to prevalent among non-techies, that throwing a few filters in place will magically fix things. Unfortunately I run into this all the time, and no amount of rational explanation makes their attitude change. Some times you have to implement the wrong solution while documenting what the right one should be, then go back and do it correctly for twice the cost.Note: Cleaned up " ` ' in original quote to display correctly instead of in codes.

A person who infringes copyright can be sued by the copyright owner and taken to court. A court can order a range of things, including that the infringer pay compensation and pay the copyright owner's costs.
In some cases, a person who infringes copyright can be charged by the police, and can be ordered to pay a fine or, in serious cases, jailed.

Criminal penalties
In some circumstances, infringement of copyright is a criminal offence to which fines and jail terms may apply.
The criminal provisions generally apply to commercial piracy, and are used particularly in relation to
infringements of copyright in records, videos and computer software.

Unless there is large scale commercial piracy going on the police just won't care, and until then it's a civil dispute that to go before the courts.

bittorent isnt evil. in fact, one could argue it's more efficient and cost effective than stamping disc after disc of 'i am legend' and 'happy feet' into a holographic, 3d box, which is then encased in a plastic alarm, which is then tagged with a theft sticker but not before being shrink-wrapped. all this is then whored up with stickers and its own display case the size of a lawn tractor trucked into thousands of walmarts.

fundamentally the concept of a movie must change. it cant be something thats administered in a controlled fashion like morphine, the technology has made that model obsolete. lowering the cost of a DVD to $12 doesnt work either, because the media available online is still free. if you're going up against free, you'd better come out with a stellar product or go home.

the only solution is to accept that either the reign of the film tycoon is over and moving pictures have been forced back into an artform, or embrace online technology and advances like CGI at their actual cost...not pixar's billion-dollar markup.

the whole goddamned film 'industry' is a conglomerate of artificiality, and im afraid the only ones to be stunned by the real prices of their 'art' are ironically the industry members themselves.

Perhaps they're suing an Australian ISP because they know that it won't fly here in the U.S., and they're hoping if they win enough overseas cases against ISPs that it'll significantly influence future actions again American ISPs? I know we would all like to believe that the MPAA and RIAA are all knee-jerk, but it stands to reason.

Of course.. they're not going after Telstra, the No.1 telco in the country because that would be a Title Fight, as opposed to the David & Goliath battle they've waged here.
There IS a simple way to fix this. Require IP holders to sue for ALL breaches of their IP content that they become aware of, otherwise they lose their hold on that IP. That means they HAVE TO sue the senators son for mp3s he's downloaded. They HAVE TO sue the No1 Telco for copyright infringements, not just the No2 ISP.
In the end the MAFIAA will be suing so many different people that the people will demand a rewrite of the IP laws.
The only way that this can come to a head is to prevent the MAFIAA from selectively picking their targets as example cases.

The problem is that it is now easier to download a movie than it is to go to the video store, find a movie to rent, rent it, then return it. Consumers tend to search for the most convenient and cheapest way to get something. The Internet pretty much takes a away a lot of hurdles, so why not use this as an opportunity?

It's not that it's so much harder, it's that the economy sucks, we have a bunch of wannabe rich people driving around in 80 thousand dollar cars that can't afford them, pinned the cost on the interest in their house, and now we have BIG problems dealing with that.

They DON'T HAVE the money to go out. The current generation thinks everything should be free (to them, at least). Their is no difference in bittorrent for legal and illegal use, etc., etc., etc.

People don't WANT to pay, and enough lames figured out how to use BitTorrent.

No distro groups are using bittorrent, they still use encrypted FTP. Bittorrent is for the lames without FTP leech accounts.. Read that last statement as "for the masses who have no technical skills or anything else to add to 'the scene'".

That's the problem with your statements... They are completely ignorant. Look at the current economy, and tell me we have a bunch of people in the USA that WANT to pay their own way.

As frighteningly scary this copyright violation behavior we hear about all the time is, all those corporate scumbags who have for years been pushing for the privatization of culture and are step by step chipping at the rights of societies worldwide to enjoy the public domain (which is the fix for the economic damage the copyright monopoly inflicts in the short run) provided themselves the fertile ground for these violations by not adapting to new technologies, and ripping off the customers as hard as they could.

Oh boy,here we go again. This is why I have to repost this every time there is anything to do with the *.A.As put on here. Don't worry brother,the brainwashing can be reversed. You see CustomDesigned,copyrights are a contract,understand? A contract between you,The citizen,and those who wish a copyright. In return for a richer public domain,which belongs to you,me,our kids and grandkids,we give them a LIMITED term of copyright,so that they will make more that we will eventually get in our glorious public domain. See how that is SUPPOSED to work?

But you see CustomDesigned,that isn't what we have anymore. We no longer have that because evil multinational corporations robbed you by performing the illegal act of bribery upon your politicians and stole your public domain from you,and me,and our kids,etc. So you see,it is kind of hard to steal from the guy who is stealing from you. You can scream "Vote" all you want,but it won't work because you can't write multi million dollar checks like they can. So you can vote all you want and it doesn't change a thing. You see civil disobedience was made for just these kinds of unjust laws written by evil men. What is civil disobedience you say? Why it is just this,refusing to obey unjust laws. Because right now the copyright system all over the world is anything BUT just.

But what is that CustomDesigned,you think that copyrights are fair? All,well then I have a sentence for you.I believe this sentence has the power to unconver the lie and I have yet to hear even the most ass kissing corporate shill defend it. Are you ready? here goes: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. You see old Walt has been dead now for half a century,longer than most of us has been alive,and yet his FIRST work,one that was created when cars needed to be started by a crank and antibiotics wasn't even invented yet,is still under copyright. You see,once copyrights extend beyond most human lifetimes they become unlimited. They become a way for a few cartels to lock up our culture and repackage it and resell it for all eternity. That,my friend,is some evil shit.

So scream "copyright violating scumbags!" all you want,the simple fact is we are ALL being royally buttraped by the big media conglomerates every day of our lives. Just look at the movies from the '30s that they repackage and sell you every year. The actors,musicians,directors,etc are all long dead,yet the giant multinational still gets to charge you for work they had nothing what so ever to do with. I'm sorry but that is some seriously evil shit.

You might want to keep up with current events. Saving a buck is just one of the reasons to violate copyright. DRM is getting to the one of the big ones, maybe even the biggest one. For example, if you buy movies, you can't play them on the most recent MacBooks. When content providers use DRM, piracy is the only way to make stuff Just Work.

When the choice is between "I can watch the movie" and "I can't watch the movie" then the issue of which choice involves payme

I wonder if it's possible to sue them for misadvertising their products.

If I pay £15 for a DVD on which there is an anti-piracy advert that I have to sit through but can download a copy of the DVD free of charge from the Internet without the advert on it, then the assumption is that I am actually paying £15 for the advert, not the movie.

And since the advert is never stated on the box as being present on the DVD at the point I buy it, then quite clearly I am getting a different product for my mon